Great Guitar Jam Tracks… I'll Show You Mine If You'll Show Me Yours

I don’t know about you, but being a full-time wage slave, husband, blogger, cancer caregiver, and general all-around nice guy, I don’t get time to jam with my friends nearly as often as I’d like––I do, however, find time as often as possible to sneak into the back room for some quality time with one of my favorite jam tracks.

No, it’s nowhere near as rewarding as jamming with my best buds, but there are some solid benefits––with a decent quality jam track you can be relatively sure your rhythm section will always be tight, your horn player won’t hammer down too many Singapore Slings, and your bass player will actually show up to practice on time (with his gear!)

Of course, there are as many styles of jam tracks as there are styles of music, but as a long time blues & old-school R&B player, I suffer from what I’ve come to call CPS (Chronic Pentatonic Syndrome.)

Yeah––you know what I’m talkin’ about.

I admit it, I’m a solid 12-bar junky, and while I tend to avoid the blues like the plague when I’m actually writing my own stuff, when it comes time to let loose with some wailin’ & screechin’ I always return to the blues. I guess it’s in my veins.

Anyway, I recently happened onto a truly high-quality source for Blues Jam Tracks (at bluesjamtracks.com. duh.) And while they aren’t free, you really do get what you pay for. These guys know their stuff, and the backing band here is just plain solid as a rock––not to mention a pleasure to solo over.

On top of that, each track is written in the style of a particular blues performer (B.B. King, T-Bone, SRV, etc,) and every download comes with not just a full backing track, but also an example solo track (in case you need some new ideas,) and a PDF file with guitar notation and TAB representing the solo. Good, good stuff.

I’ve also just recently gotten acquainted with IG’s aptly titled IG BLOG Playalongs––these bad boys are free, and while I haven’t had a chance to check all of them out yet, I have enjoyed channeling some groovy Hendrix mojo with IG’s “Hey Joe Jam.”

Which brings me to the question… got any favorite Jam Track sources you can share with us?